Breaking the Rules
By Jenna
Cinderella is so kind and obedient, she never cracks, rages or loses her cool. When she’s told that she will not be able to attend the King’s ball because she needs to help her stepsisters get all prettied up and then separate the lentils from the ashes, she did as she was told. Regardless of Cinderella’s obedience to her wicked stepmother though, something clicks in her head and all of that obedience disappears. Cinderella decides to disobey her wicked stepmother and goes to the ball anyways. With the help of her fairies she is given everything a girl could ever need to win the guy of her dreams over, aka the prince, and she does just that. Cinderella continues to disobey her wicked stepmother throughout the 3-day ball. She proceeds to lose her shoe at the end of the night, only to in the end try the shoe on and marry the prince, living happily ever after.
Ella Enchanted is a modern interpretation of the classic Cinderella fairytale. Ella is given the “gift” of obedience when she is born, which makes her obey everything she is told to do. Although she obeys, Ella is not obedient and proceeds throughout her life to try and resist every command she is given. One in particular, she is told she can never see the prince again by her evil stepsister, which she very clearly disobeys, as much of the story revolves around the two of them on adventures. The ending is the most important part though, as she is commanded by the prince’s uncle to kill him. Ella is able to resist being obedient, take control of her life and goes on to take back everything her evil stepmother and stepsisters took from her, living happily ever after with the prince.
Civil obedience is the refusal to obey commands by a government, without resorting to violence. It is a symbolic violation of the law rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. Sit-ins were an integral part of the nonviolent strategy of civil disobedience and mass protests that eventually led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On February 1,1960, four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, NC, and asked for coffee. When they were refused service, they simply sat quietly and waited to be served, disobeying the laws of the “whites only” section. The sit-ins continued until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
